A virtual baby is part of the toolkit used by a scheme highlighted as one to follow by recipients of the new Children’s Fund.The baby, George, can be programmed to sleep, cry and scream – just like a normal baby – and is used by Stevenage Family Support Service to help families under stress and to talk through the implications of unplanned pregnancy with young people.

Backroom health professionals are to see their worth recognised in a new training and development initiative for allied health professions.It’s part of what the Government calls a comprehensive strategy for improving the status, training, pay and career opportunities for 50,000 NHS and social services staff including physiotherapists,paramedics and radiographers.

Seely Brown J, Duguid PHarvard Business Review, (USA), May-Jun 2000 Vol 78 No 3 Start page: 73. No of pages: 6Contrasts the latitude given to creative knowledge workers with the close attention to documented process which increasingly characterizes other occupations. Points out the limitations of process thinking, illustrating the need to make opportunities for people to share information on problems and possible solutions. Describes some ways in which working groups overcome the limits of documented process and asks why useful information deposited in databases often remains unused. Suggests a process akin to academic peer review as a way of validating stores of knowledge which can be useful to the working group